A response to "The Hidden Life of Men: What they really think, What superpowers they possess, how they see the world."

Edit: I just learned that the author was male, please disregard any thoughts from when I believed the author to be female, I am leaving the post as I wrote it.

First, if you're reading this and haven't read this please click and do so now.

I was not done with the second paragraph before I wanted to beat the author with her own words. (I'm assuming the writer was female based on the blog.) Saying that I (a man) has no thoughts, only looking to fill points in a script such as food, beer, sports and legs (or other woman parts) is just showing ignorance. I deal with ignorant people every day in my job, so being smacked with a wall of ignorance shouldn't be a surprise but it was. I wonder how this "feminist" would take it if I lumped all "feminists" into a package saying they only think about bras, how they can be oppressed, and how loud they can complain. But I don't do that because no single person in the entire world is completely like another.

Now the author goes on to say men are like dogs. Now if a man describes a woman as a dog she will most certainly flip out, why it is okay for a woman to do the exact same thing? Dear author I'm calling your cowardly ass out. (You'll notice the post is by "Guest") If you have to hide behind anonymity then maybe you shouldn't write that post.

Last thing in the second paragraph is the author saying LDS guys are like normal guys. What is a "Normal" guy? What is a "Normal" human for that matter? You think in your analogy that LDS guys don't replace "beer" with something else, but say they don't and that they are incomplete. Sure as long as we ignore the next sentence you write saying that "Oh yeah well any item of /subject/ can be substituted."

"...get two nuclear physicist together talking shop...and they've only substituted their profession for 'Football'" This is the equivalent of saying "Put two women together and they'll only gossip." Personally I don't tend to talk about work or sports with anyone in my profession. Work might come up from time to time but I never have an exclusive topic of conversation. Then she continues to say even two professionals in a conversation will devolve into sports. I don't know what professionals always have their conversation go from their profession to one about sports. I don't know anyone who doesn't keep their conversations to the topic necessary to achieve the goal of the conversation, be it a physicist or a IT guy.

The next paragraph the author says that guys are simple, but woman think they are complicated. Here's where the author really shows that she knows nothing about the male half of the species. Men and Woman are raised with a bunch of stereotypes; for men its "don't share your feelings, don't cry, you have to always be strong." just to name a few. Maybe this is why the author thinks men are not complicated, she's only experienced men who are trapped in the stereotypes they were raised with.

The author wants to talk about how women see a "chick flick" and see something in the characters she recognizes in someone she knows. But a guy watches a movie that requires no thought at all. I love any type of movie as long as it has a good story and plot to it, wether its a romance, drama, comedy, action, horror, sci-fi or any combination of genre. If the story or plot sucks, then I don't like the movie. As far as television goes, I prefer television that makes you think, wether its a mystery that I try to solve before the characters on screen do or a show involving science and experiments that I can learn from. I'd like to see the author name her examples of "guy television" and "guy movies."

"All woman think men have superpowers. This frustrates guys" My first reaction to this I'll admit was "What. The. Fuck?!" I have NEVER had ANYONE tell me I had superpowers. If they had I'd respond "cool" and move on. "they have three superpowers avaiable and don't know about it." Doesn't this contradict the last quote? How can a guy be frustrated that a woman thinks he has superpowers but he doesn't know he has superpowers? Maybe this is why the author cowers and hides her identity? Because she can't form a cohirent string of thoughts that don't contradict each other.

Alright so men have superpowers, lets take a look at the author's explanation of this.

Mind reading: So the author says that woman shouldn't get frustrated that men can't read their minds. Wait I thought this was an explanation of what supposed superpowers men had, not what they didn't have. I'm confused, does the author think guys have superpowers or not?

I may not be able to read your mind but I bet if you're not hiding it, I can tell if your happy or upset.

Here comes another contradiction. Guys in general have more upper body strength than woman. Here's another stereotype we're all thrown into. No, wait the author's explanation for this is "dumb luck and testosterone." and this isn't a superpower like women think it is. However it counts a superpower men don't know they have. I can't make sense of what the author is saying. Is this a superpower or not? Because she's said both yes and no in the same paragraph.

Being arrogant is also a superpower, and women are more attracted to arrogant men. I think rather than a superpower this shows a flow in some women's thought process of how to pick a mate. Perhaps here is where I should realize that the author isn't talking about me, but about the dumb men she's picked in her dating life. Personally I consider arrogance to be a personality flaw, not a superpower.

"Why are there any nice guys left? Well, guys don't think enough to catch on to things like this." This begin that "women tend to like arrogant guys more than self confident ones" arrogance and self confidence are different? I'm sure you can be self confident without being arrogant but I'm not so sure you can be arrogant without being self confident. "and a lot more than nice guys." Yet I hear those same woman complain that they can't ever find a "nice guy" or that all the "nice guys are taken." Hey women who think this, listen up. GO TALK TO THE GUYS! Not the loud ones at the bar but the quiet one off to the side. He probably thinks you're hot but out of his league. He probably has too much respect for women to just butt in to your conversation between you and your girlfriends.

On to the third and final superpower guys have but don't know. "the ability to think they look guy when they really do not." Why? because guys walk around on the beach with "their ownsomes exposed to the world." Alright, sure maybe some guys think they look good when they don't. So do most the women in Hollywood or models or the 40 year old who still shops in the children's section. Maybe some guys just don't obsess about their looks. "This is how I look and I'm okay with it." Hey there's that self confidence, and you know, what? If that guy, who doesn't look good, thinks that you think he looks good, there's that arrogance you're so attracted to! You say he's not attractive? Please stop contradicting yourself now and save me the headache.

Included with this third superpower is that to a guy the word "cute" means "pretty." Alright, lets look up the definitions of the words "cute" and "pretty."

Cute: adj 1. Attractive or pretty in a dainty way

Pretty: adj 1. pleasingly attractive in a delicate way.

So pretty is part of the definition of cute, and pretty means attractive. Just to avoid confusion lets define dainty and delicate also.

Dainty: adj 1. delicate

Delicate: adj 1. fine in texture, quality, etc 2. fragile 3. precise in action 4. keenly sensitive

So if a guy says that you are cute what he's really saying is that you're attractive but sensitive and fragile. Well lets see, my mom says my sister gets away with her attitudes and easily hurt feelings because she's sensitive due to her hormones. Also the author herself said that men are stronger than women "(in upper body strength)" so I guess fragile is true too. So I guess a guy saying you're cute is only speaking the truth according to my mom and the author.

Now the author goes back to talking about superpowers guys don't have. Wait, is this another one that guys don't have but they do have but don't know that they have it? Omniscience: noun 1. the quality or state of being omniscient 2. Infiniite knowledge 3. God. Well I know some guys who think they are "God's gift to women." Not sure I know any guy who thinks he is God or as the author states, women think men have omniscience, but I don't know any women who thinks any of the men around her are God. Wait what's the title of this blog? "Feminist Mormon Housewives." So this is a blog from a religious perspective where the author admits (or says some women admit) to thinking that a man who buys her roses instead of carnations is God. I'm not sure I have to say anything else on this. Back to the flowers, the guy ended up giving the girl roses just by dumb luck. Is this the same dumb luck that gave him upper body strength? This point does lead to something I can agree with the author about. Dropping subtle hints won't work with an arrogant man. The arrogant man knows exactly what you want, and since you didn't tell him otherwise, he's right.

Maybe if you didn't pass up your chance with that nice guy he would pay attention to what you say and catch your hints and clues as to what you like.

"By 'subtle' I mean 'things a woman would consider so obvious it must be shouting''" yet another contradiction.

I passed the bit with her saying men have attention deficit disorder. Where did the author get her doctorate? How did she make this diagnosis of every man on the planet? I think after reading this article I can guess that the author is either on a vendetta or insane, but I would suggest the author go see a few doctors with medical degrees perhaps one with a degree in psychology and get a professional opinion or two.

How guys see the world when they go off "script" as referenced earlier in the post. Well this is the one superpower guys have left. But wait, I thought there were only three and we covered those. Wait, isn't this another contradiction? Why yes, yes it is.

Seeing beauty in those they love. Just to stay on track, lets define Beauty: noun 1. the quality that gives intense pleasure to the sight or other senses. I'm not sure I get intense pleasure in any sense from everyone I love, but lets define intense just to make sure. Intense: adj 2. having strong feeling. So beauty is "quality that gives strong feelings of pleasure to sight or other senses" well that defiantly doesn't fit how I feel about everyone I love. Now based on the rest of the paragraph the author should have said "Seeing beauty in those they are in love with."

Okay she's right, but not for her reason stated (men think women are crazy.) No, I only think the author is crazy. Beauty is different for every person in the world. What I find beauty in, I would guess that almost everyone else in the world wouldn't. Sure there may be sometimes where another person and I find beauty in the same thing but that will never happen with all things.

Here's what you should remember. Men and Women are different, but only because they were raised that way. You can stop enforcing gender stereotypes with your kids and maybe that will help men and women understand each other better.

The author ends her post with "That is the hidden life of men." No, that post is a reenforcement of stereotypes and part of what's wrong with the world.

Moving from Apple's iPhone to Google's Nexus One

This will appear disjointed because i'm going to put in dots as they come not in any particular order

Turning the phone on. The iphone's implementation of turning the phone on is better i know me that you can use the power button and the home button to turn the phone off on the nexus 1 only to power button will turn the phone on standby the trackball will not.

Keyboard: the iPhone will show you what key you're on if you hold your finger over it, as will the Nexus One. You do have a suggestion bar and that suggests possible words you're trying to type so using this could make typing much faster. (Note, yes auto-correct is turned on, I don't know if there's a way to modify what it will auto-correct.) I will say my biggest problem with the Nexus One is with the keyboard, if I start typing fast I eventually end up hitting the home button and kicking myself out of the application I'm using at the time. This NEVER happened on the iPhone. I think the Nexus One's suggestions are also more distracting than helpful as I'm spending more time looking for the right suggestion to assist in typing rather than just typing. The "keys" are also spaced closer together than the iPhone's, they keys could be spaced further apart to make tying easier.

File management: Adding custom ringtones is extremely easy on the iPhone, granted I have Garageband so its just edit a file, export as ringtone and done. The Nexus One requires no less steps in creating the file except I can create ringtones on the device from existing songs already on it, however transferring files to the Nexus One requires some extra steps since there's no management application like iTunes. You have to select the USB settings from the phone and Mount the device from the phone before you can modify files on the SD Card from the computer.

Default (built-in) Applications: The Nexus One has the most built-in applications but lets look at how useful those are, quality over quantity. Both phones have a browser, calculator*, calendar, camera, photo gallery, clock, address book, email, maps, app store, music store, SMS, Music player, phone (obviously), Weather*, youtube, clock and in current iphone models though not mine, voice search and dialing. (the Nexus One has these as separate applications while the iPhone combines these into one.)
(*The calculator in the iPhone provides you with a scientific calculator if you rotate to landscape view, the Nexus One remains a simple basic calculator.)
The iPhone also gives you Notes, Stocks and voice recorder.
Nexus One gives you Navigation, facebook, gmail, goggles, news* (built into the weather application), google talk and google voice.
Okay so the missing applications on the Nexus One can easily be added for free from the android marketplace. Not so easy to do on the iPhone, to get Google Voice for instance, you have to jailbreak your iPhone or use the web application but I'm not counting web applications, only native ones. (Google's web application is amazing though)
Here's where my issue of quality comes in though, I will never use the facebook application, but I cannot remove it. (If there is a way the process is far too difficult) This is space I will never get to use and since I'm limited to the internal phone memory instead of the expansion card for applications I'm quite upset about this "open" operating system forcing me to keep this application. (I'm sure it can be removed by rooting the phone but I don't want to do this, jailbreaking was part of the reason for giving up the iPhone.)

Camera: The Nexus One has the better camera hands down. Not because its 5MP, not because of the flash, because of the auto-focus.

Battery life: This is not usually an issue for me, my iPhone charges when I'm in the car and its very rare that I ended up with battery life problems. The Nexus One has mostly been left without charging for the entire day, still more than 1/4 battery life left at 13 hours of use. (Note: I'm not a heavy phone user.) If you're not getting the battery life you expect out of your Nexus One then you can see why by going into settings and about, it'll tell you what part of the phone is using up your battery the most and suggest a way for you to fix it.

Notifications when phone screen is off: the iPhone will light up for a few seconds with a message popup that will remain or become a list if you have multiple notifications when you turn the phone on, you can see this before you unlock, then each application will have a badge letting you know there was activity, but you'd have to browse though your applications to see these.
The Nexus One uses the trackball as a notification light, with the screen off I can see that something happened on my phone, turning the phone on, the icons in the notification bar tell me what apps are affected and I can use the same notification bar as many times as needed to access each application.

Docks: While I don't have the official Apple iPhone dock, I have the Griffin Air, which doubles as an amplifier for the iPhone's speaker and emulates the iPhone dock well enough. I slide my phone on, it connects to the computer, syncs with iTunes and starts to charge.
The Nexus One dock is designed for the phone's body, this is unfortunate because I have the invisible shield on my device (Both the Nexus One and iPhone) And although the invisible shield is very thin and much less obtrusive than a case, it prevents the dock from working as designed with the Nexus One. I have to work to get the phone to dock correctly, but its worth it for the clock and its "night mode" as I'm going to call it.

Instant Messaging/SMS: the iPhone doesn't have any native IM clients but its SMS application is as close to iChat as you can get on the phone, if you had two iPhone users with unlimited SMS plans then it would be for all intents and purposes iChat. The Nexus One comes with an SMS application as well as gTalk. The Messaging application works just like the iPhone's SMS application, doesn't feel like SMS messages do on other phones. Google Talk only allows you to use one of your google accounts, the one you setup as your primary account. This goes the same with Google Voice and any other Google application on the phone, they'll use the same Google account, so if you sign out of one you sign out of all of them. This doesn't work very well for those that have multiple accounts for public and personal use. So with both phones you're better off using an app downloaded from whichever store you have access to.

Overall I'm enjoying my time with the Nexus One, but will be keeping an Apple device around due not only to the many applications available, but the money already invested.

UPDATE: When a call comes in while your phone is locked the iPhone only allows you to answer the call or let it ring its full time to forward to voicemail, the Nexus One allows you to decline the call.

First 12 hours with the Nexus One UPDATED

My Nexus One that I ordered on Friday arrived today. (Overnight shipping my ass.) I'm still in the setting up and configuring phase for a few reasons, 1. I wasn't home when it arrived, 2. I had to get an Invisible Shield from Zagg on it so it wouldn't slip out of my hand. 3. I'm still reading The Manual. (Yes I read the manual.)

My early impressions are that its not an every-man's phone. Its not an intuitive UI. Browsing and selecting applications is more difficult than it should be in the world of the iPhone. Instead of having your applications available on your various homescreens, there's an application list that you have to select from, you can drag an application from this list to your home screens but why the extra step?

If your phone is on silent, you can't modify any of the sound options until you take your phone off silent, so I couldn't even view the ringtone list until I un-silenced my phone.

The keyboard seems to have some consistent problems getting along with my fingers, or the other way around, either way its always trying to type letters that I'm not trying to type when I'm towards one of the edges of the device.

Multitasking is great except when applications are competing for your attention with notifications that you have activity up in the header of the phone. However since there's no obvious way to quit an application I have to assume that every application I open is running in the background and chewing up my battery.

Uninstalling applications is also more steps than it should be, you have to go into settings, then manage your applications and uninstall via a menu system instead of removing from the homescreen.

Oh and since this is the big thing to make an issue, NO FLASH OMGWTFBBQ.... /sarcasm

I love the screen and the controls, having the option to roll the mouse down so I don't have to look at the phone is great.

The Android Marketplace is easy to navigate. It looks like most if not all the apps I used over 3G on my iPhone are here.

EVERYTHING is fast.

Oh yeah, Speech to text. This is AWESOME

I also bought the dock but didn't have much to say about it until I decided to go to bed and saw this... Okay now that is just cool and makes this the perfect accessory, great for travel and just so simple.

In about a week I'll review and compare the Nexus One and the iPhone after giving the Nexus One a fair chance. (And by fair chance I mean that I'll be writing this up after I'm as used to the Nexus One as I am with the iPhone, so if that takes longer than a week I'll give it longer than a week.)

Update: There's a task manager in the settings. I can see what applications are currently running now so I guess only parts of applications remain running if those applications have some sort of notification service, the main application shuts down when you leave it if the application isn't active. The notification bar tells you if you have an "ongoing" application meaning that its running in the background.

Update 2: I'm trying to not update this post too much but I didn't mention this above because I didn't miss it, but a software update released today adds multitouch to the Nexus One, looks like a good week to be switching.

Tech Support Rants #2: FIRE!

Tech Support Rants 3:

So this is the tech support rant for Tuesday, whatever the date is cuz I don’t really know. I don’t pay attention to things like that. Tuesday, I held off on this one because I thought I would get a little more today. Maybe it’s for Wednesday, I have no idea. Anyway, I’m way behind. I didn’t go on about training, I missed days because I didn’t have any really bad calls. Actually this week I’ve had really good calls until yesterday, which was Wednesday the 27th or something like that. Anyway, so call comes in and customer says, “I’m calling because my computer caught fire.”

The agent sits there and seems to go “Oh, your computer caught fire. Well, that’s interesting. Uh, well, are you at the computer?”

The customer’s like, “Well no. I’m calling for my son who’s not here at the moment, and the computer isn’t here with him.”

And so the agent goes, “Well, oh, let me see what I can do.” And he puts the customer on hold. It’s kind of a long hold. At this point the agent hasn’t asked anything like, “Well is the fire put pout? Is everyone okay?” You know… simple common sense questions, you know. Kind of like… make sure that the customer’s okay and not calling you when they should be calling the fire department instead. They actually train us on that. *sigh*

You know I think the training is worthless. I don’t think it sinks in to half these people that they have, and ….argh… a quarter or half of the other half is just there because they can breathe. And then half of the other half, which is half of the half of the half of the half… I think. Anyway, they’re the ones that actually know what they’re doing and can do the job well. Too bad they can’t infect the others with how to do the job well.

Anyways, the agent comes back and says, “Well it’s Dell’s policy that we can’t help you unless you’re in front of the computer.” Uh… yeah… so uh, of course this guy gets a really low score and basically gets told, “I’m sorry. You did the wrong thing.” So… because there is no policy like that. There is nothing that says you have to be in front of the computer to help to troubleshoot it. Especially when it comes to somebody saying their computer caught on fire. There’s absolutely nothing that says anything about the customer has to be in front of the computer.

But this is what makes it all the better. The supervisor for this agent wrote me an email today saying “I don’t accept this score,” Or this red flag as we call them because that’s what happens, you get so many red flags you’re supposed to be fired because they’re supposed to be severe violations of the policies that are put in place. And so he comes back and says, “I don’t accept this red flag because the agent did exactly what he was supposed to do.”

I basically... had one of those moments where I had my jaw drop open, and I said, “What? How could he have done what he was supposed to do? He didn’t even check to see if the people were all right, if the computer was not on fire anymore!”

He did finally tell the customer, ‘Uh well…..I wouldn’t use that computer anymore.” At the end of the call, but…. First thing; is the computer unplugged? Is everyone okay? Was anyone hurt in the fire? Is the fire out?” Those should be among the first things that you ask, not the last things that you say! But… the supervisor didn’t officially dispute it, so as far as I know he might have by now.

But, you know, it’s kind of the ridiculous that even the supervisor sits there and says, “Well he did what he was supposed to do.” And…uh… I’d like to see where the policy says that he did what he was supposed to do. *sigh*

Jeez… you know, if you ever call and you get somebody in Utah, well… just hope it’s one of the southern places in Utah and not the northern one. That’s all I’m going to say. Uh… yeah it’s kind of obvious where I live, so, you know… I don’t really care. This is, just, it gets so ridiculous, and this has stuck with me for… I don’t know... it’s probably been almost 12 hours. Probably because I sent myself an email to remind me, “Hah! This happened!” Gotta love email. Like it a lot better than phones. But that’s another story and it has nothing to do with this. So there you go…um… I’m gonna shut up and stop saying Um.

After these messages...

So Lights Off is coming to the App Store.
Probably one of the games I enjoy the most because its a brain puzzle. Those are the only games that I can play over and over again and will always bring me back. I'm sure this will become a permanent addition to my homescreen.
This was the first native iPhone app and now with the SDK everyone can experience it.
http://www.lightsoffapp.com/ for more info and how to buy.

Tech and You, or How to Not Get Hung Up On By Your Tech Support Person

This will probably be the shortest post for tech support related advice you'll see. Honestly the answer to this is very, very simple.

The best way to do everything you can to not get hung up on by the person on the other side of the line when you call tech support is to just be calm.

Unfortunately I can't tell you this is a guarantee that you won't be hung up on, I've been hung up on for asking for something as simple as an explanation, or asking a question that was too hard for the agent I was talking to.

So be calm, don't sound upset or frustrated, don't make demands or get hostile. If you do, apologize. It shows that you understand you made the mistake and want to keep working to fix the problem.

Remember, most tech support people do not get paid enough for what they do. Most will be more than happy to stay on the line longer with someone who's pleasant to talk to. If you're unpleasant, usually the goal will be to do whatever they can do to get you off the line as fast as possible.